


Aid and Comfort

by Isis



Category: Sharpe - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-06-01
Updated: 2009-06-01
Packaged: 2017-11-01 12:54:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/357028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isis/pseuds/Isis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even an honourable man sometimes finds temptation difficult to resist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aid and Comfort

**Author's Note:**

> Set within the events of (and contains spoilers for) Sharpe's Sword.

When he could stand it no longer Sharpe slipped out of the tent. He paused, listening, but the girl's breathing was steady. She hadn't woken. Good.

Here and there a few soldiers sat around low fires, but for the most part the camp was still and silent, and quietly he made his way to the edge of the forest. He laid his back against a tree and closed his eyes. The lass was so young, and had been through – well, he didn't know what she had been through, but she had been so clearly terrified, so frightened. And now she clung to him as though she would be whipped away in the wind if he did not stand like a rock for her. It was all one to her, grief and love and betrayal and desire. It was not right for her to be in his tent, to look at him like that. She should be with Ramona. Not in his tent.

He was only a man, after all. And the temptation of the flesh was strong. Maybe if he relieved his own needs he would be able to sleep, he decided, and he had just begun to undo his trousers when he heard a soft noise, then a voice. "Richard. Can't sleep either?"

His arm fell to his side. "Jack."

"Don't let it trouble you," Spears said, and Sharpe stared: had the man read his thoughts? "Colonel Berkeley knows you were simply being cautious. And I hope you know I was only doing my duty."

It wasn't about the lass, then. Sharpe relaxed a fraction into the tree at his back and shrugged. "You did nowt but translate for the lying bastard."

"That's right." 

There was an odd note in his voice. Sharpe considered Spears' words. "But it troubles you."

"I know what he's feeling. I know what it's like to be prisoner in an enemy camp." In the dim moonlight, Sharpe could see Spears look to his feet, and then back at him. "And I would not lose your friendship."

"Well." He looked away. Friendship; so that was what it was. It was odd to talk of friendship with this man. A lord and a commissioned officer, not a scrapper of a soldier like he was. Not that Spears ever appeared to notice the difference.

Spears fumbled in his jacket and brought out a slim silver flask, holding it against his body with his forearm as he awkwardly opened the cap with his one hand. He drank and held the flask out to Sharpe. The raw spirit was no better than what he usually bought for himself, but it was good enough. It left a sharp burn on his lips and in his throat, and a warmth in his belly, and when he gave it back to Spears, he nodded his thanks.

Spears took another drink. "How is she?"

For a moment, Sharpe's gut clenched in anger and surprise; and then Spears added, "She still hasn't spoken?" and he relaxed. Of course it was after her welfare he was asking; Spears was a gentleman, not a coarse soldier. Not that she wasn't safe in the camp, under his protection and under Ramona's watchful eye. But Sharpe was certain he knew what the men were thinking; and who could blame them, with a pretty young lass about?

He shook his head. "She has not." 

Again the flask was passed to him, and again he drank. Perhaps it would help him sleep. He handed it back, and Spears grasped it carefully, his fingers brushing Sharpe's. They seemed hot, his fingers, or maybe it was just the contrast with the cool metal of the flask. He could smell the spirits, and under that, a trace of the scent Spears used. 

Sharpe had joked once with the other men, when he was one of them, that it was the smell of an officer; the higher the rank and the fancier the title, the more they seemed to want to smell like a French whorehouse. Sharpe supposed it was to hide the stink of the camp, of battle, of too many men in the same uniforms day after day. Of course now he himself was an officer. But he was damned if he was going to reek like a whore. 

Besides, it wouldn't do to have a Frenchie smelling him before he put a ball through his skull. Couldn't sneak through the woods. Although Spears wasn't too bad; Sharpe only noticed it at times like these, when they were standing close by each other. Even now it was just a hint of a scent, which he noticed only when Spears leaned closer to speak. 

"I can't imagine it's easy. You feel responsible for her."

"Aye."

"She's a very pretty girl. A very young girl."

"Too young," he muttered. She would have been a match for Perkins, maybe. Had Perkins not been killed. That was the hell of war, that the young were destroyed, he thought; an old man like him, he was used to it, it was all he knew. But Perkins had deserved more. And so did the lass. 

"She is that. You're a fine elder brother to her."

He snorted. "I suspect that is not how she thinks of me."

"Ah, Richard. You're too honourable a man to take advantage of a girl in distress. Even when she throws herself at you. Quite to your credit." Was there a mocking tone to Spears' voice? He couldn't tell. "To honour," said Spears, holding up the flask and tipping it towards him. On his face was the ghost of a smile, a twist in his lips that held no humour. He drank deeply, passed it to Sharpe. 

"To honour," he echoed automatically, and drank.

"And all the good that does us." Spears' tone was bitter, and Sharpe looked at him in surprise. 

"But you'd do the same."

"Would I?" Spears raised an eyebrow, and Sharpe frowned. Then Spears nodded, touched him on the arm. "No, of course I would. You're right." Sharpe gave him back his flask, and he took it in his good hand, holding it up and studying it as though there were something etched on the silver surface, some words, maybe, or a map that he wished to memorize. "Then again, young girls hold no temptation for me." The mocking hint of a smile played across his lips again, and he looked over at Sharpe. "My tastes run in a different direction."

"Ah," said Sharpe, nodding to cover his confusion. The way Spears was looking at him – but that made no bloody sense. The man was a captain, and a titled bastard at that. But he was looking at him. He was looking at him, that odd smile on his face; and he was standing close enough that his scent was in Sharpe's nostrils, both the sweet stuff he used and the dirt and sweat and grit underneath. 

Then again, could be his meaning was that he preferred women with a bit more maturity to them, which, to be honest, so did Sharpe himself. More years, more knowledge, more patience with a man. And that brought to him, unbidden, the image of Teresa, riding alongside him in the sunlight, her hair streaming behind her, her smile brilliant and full of love. Followed, as it always was, by the image of her lifeless body on that damned cart. He closed his eyes, but the pain was still there. It was always there. Just another scar, he supposed; but Christ, hadn't he scars enough? 

A hand on his arm brought him back to the present. "Richard." Spears' voice was low in his ear, and his hand was warm as it slid gently from shoulder to elbow. 

Christ. Sharpe shook himself free and opened his eyes. "Tell me, what do you mean by that? What are you about, Jack?" It came out more like a challenge than he had intended, the words harsh and acrid, hanging in the air between them like the puff of smoke from the barrel of a rifle. 

Spears just stood there, his expression unreadable and unchanging. A smile on his lips that did not reach his eyes. "Why, nothing," he said lightly. "Just trying to ease a friend's troubles. As well as my own."

 _And what do you know of my troubles_ , Sharpe wanted to say, but he held his tongue. "Aye," he finally said, slumping back against the tree. "We all have our troubles, don't we."

"We'll have more troubles if we don't get some sleep." Spears tucked his flask back into his jacket. "Good night, Major Sharpe. I believe that tomorrow we march."

* * *

The sounds of battle rang in his ears. The low boom of cannonfire, the short shocks of rifles and muskets, the screams of men as they were cut down. Muzzle flashes cut through the darkness and the smoke like lightning in a storm. A storm that was only worsening around Sharpe and his forces. 

He'd wounded Leroux, but he himself had been wounded as well. Huddled against the wall with Harper and Spears, he looked out over the battlements. They were losing, losing to that lying bastard Leroux and the goddamned French cannon, and with Colonel Berkeley dead it was up to him to give the order to retreat.

Christ, he hated to do it. But they were being slaughtered. It was hopeless. He could hear his own breath harsh in his chest. It felt like iron bands clasped him, like those around a barrel. Aye, he was a barrel, one that had been tapped by a blade, and what was inside him was leaking out onto the ground, and he could only watch, helpless to stanch the flow.

"Get the lads back home, Jack, quick as you can." Each bitten-out word was an agony. But if they could fall back to Villafranca, and Munro could get them some cannon to match the ones the Frenchies had – aye, they'd show Leroux and his lot what good English iron could do.

He watched Spears for a moment as he gathered the men and rallied them back. Good man, that Jack. Strong, self-possessed, the model of a proper officer; one hell of a captain, and the men followed him without a thought or a doubt. All he had to do was open his mouth and they listened. Not like him. The Chosen Men followed him now, but that was a bond forged from blood and battle. The rest of the South Essex might balk at taking his orders – which was why he'd given the task to Spears.

Sharpe and the Rifles would cover them. Harper pulled him to his feet and he almost fainted, dizzy, but he shouldered his rifle and squinted into the darkness. Behind him he heard Spears' confident voice, calling to the men: "Steady, steady," in an even tone that did not hint at their defeat but only told them their plain duty. And with them he obeyed, sighting and shooting through the pain that threatened to overwhelm him: steady, steady. With satisfaction he watched one of the Frenchmen fall.

He stumbled backward, trying to ignore the sharp tendrils of pain that radiated from the wound Leroux had given him. It was becoming difficult to see through the smoke that filled the air. His head rang with gunfire, with the screams from the men, screams in French and in English and in the wordless language of the dying. 

There was a flash of light, the loud bark of a rifle. A terrible shearing fire sliced his gut. He crumpled, and knew no more.

* * *

_"What were you thinking, making me your Sergeant?" said Harper. He leaned against the stone wall, picking his teeth with a stalk of grass._

_"The men listen to you. And you can fight." Sharpe could feel the results of that fight in every bone in his body. He lay stretched out on the cool ground. It would hurt to move, he knew, but he would have to get up sooner or later._

_"That I can._ _Would you like me to beat you again?"_

_He laughed. "I couldn't go another round with those fists of yours."_

_"Well, then. Up you go." Harper held out a hand and reluctantly Sharpe took it. When Harper pulled him to his feet it felt as though his arm was being pulled out of its socket, and his legs gave way and he sagged into Harper's arms._

_"Jesus, Pat. You're going to kill me." It hurt everywhere, like being flogged all over again, on his back, on his chest, on his arms and legs. Harper's hands on him squeezed unmercifully hard. "Let me rest a while more."_

_"Come on. We've got to get back to the boys." Harper pushed him upright and prodded at his chest. Flowers of pain burst and spread from each spot Harper touched._

_"No, no, I can't do this," he said, in growing alarm. It hurt, Christ it hurt, it hurt more than anything, and Harper would not stop pushing at him. He grabbed Harper's arms and pushed them down. "You've got to let me rest."_

_Harper smiled at him and brought his arms up. "Let go," he said, pressing his hands against Sharpe's chest, pressing the air out of him so that he coughed and spat and could not breathe. Blood spurted from his chest under Harper's hands, bright red blossoms of agony and despair. "Let go," repeated Harper. "Let go."_

"Let go, soldier," said a voice. It held the lilt of Ireland, but it wasn't Harper's voice. The Portuguese countryside was gone. He was lying on chill stone, and the stench of death permeated the air around him. "Let go," the voice repeated, and Sharpe sank back into blackness.

* * *

_"I had thought that you loved me," said Teresa. She was dressed in her riding outfit, dark jacket over a white shirt and trousers, her hair in a long braid down her straight back. She gazed out the window, not at him._

_"I do, you know that," he said desperately. "Of course I love you."_

_"So why is she in your bed?"_

_"She is not – I haven't touched her!"_

_"But she has touched you." With that, she turned fully toward him, her lips curled with scorn. Oh, she was beautiful in her anger, beautiful and terrible, and his heart pounded and swelled in sympathy, as though it could not contain the great love he felt for her._

_"I swear she has not!"_

_She pulled a pistol from her trousers. "Oh, but she has. There," she said; the pistol barked, and he jerked as the ball seared his shoulder. "And there." Another report and another sharp pain, this one in his side. She smiled unpleasantly. He had never seen her look this way at him. At the French, yes, but never at him._

_"And there," she said, and this time the pistol was pointed straight at his heart. She pulled the trigger, and he screamed._

His eyes fluttered open for a brief moment. Teresa's face disappeared; instead, a pretty lass leaned over him, her eyes wide with concern. Her hand touched the burning hole in his chest where Teresa had shot him, and he remembered. He remembered finding the strange, silent lass; he remembered Teresa as she lay dying. His last thought, as he drifted back into unconsciousness, was that he would rather have Teresa shoot him in the heart than all the kindnesses of all the pretty lasses in the world.

For maybe, then, he would be able to join her.

* * *

_"Richard." Spears' voice was low in his ear, and his hand was warm as it slid gently from shoulder to elbow. "Richard. Don't you know what it is that I want?"_

_"You can't be serious," he said, or tried to; the words would not pass his parched, cracked lips. There was no air in his chest, only pain. The forest around them had vanished, but Sharpe did not question this. Instead, they were in the room they had been assigned at the Irish Mission, a fire on the grate despite the warm evening. Too hot, that room. He could feel the beads of sweat collecting under the thick wool of his uniform. Yet Spears looked as cool and calm as ever he did._

_"It's so hot," Sharpe muttered. "Like a furnace under me jacket."_

_"Shall I take it off for you?"_

_"I don't think –"_

_"Let me, Richard." Nimble fingers unfastened the buttons, sliding the cloth around each one until Sharpe's jacket hung loose and open. Spears tugged at it and Sharpe shifted and pulled until it slid from his shoulders, but he was still hot, damnably hot, and the sweat dripped from his forehead. Spears regarded him, and then nodded once, decisively. "The blouse too, I think."_

_Sharpe wanted to argue, but Spears would not be dissuaded. One piece at a time his clothes were stripped from him, and he would have thought it would have cooled him but the room seemed hotter still. Spears reached out to grasp his upper arm, then shook his head._

_"You're burning up." His hand moved up Sharpe's arm to his shoulder, across his chest and down, down. Where his fingers moved, numbness followed, blessed relief from the pain, and Sharpe sighed and shifted, seeking more. A cool touch on his belly, sliding across his hip. Tentatively he reached out his own hands, ran them down Spears' sides._

_His prick stirred, and Spears smiled. It was a strange, unsettling smile, and it made Sharpe uneasy, and it made his heart pound and his prick twitch even more. "Something you want?" Spears said._

_Sharpe swallowed hard. "Not I." But he could not deny the urges of his body, and when Spears grasped his rising flesh he did not stop him. His head fell back against the wall, and he closed his eyes. Spears' hand was cool and he thrust into it, but as he did Spears loosened his grip and Sharpe found himself thrusting into the air._

_"Not so fast," said Spears, grinning. "There's a lot of you to touch and I've only the one hand to do it with." He stroked Sharpe's thigh, and Sharpe moaned. It hurt, and yet it relieved the hurting, and he moved as Spears' hand seemed to bid him, sliding down his leg and then back up the other, then to his hip, stroking him, turning him…_

_Then, nothing._

_"Jack?" he tried to whisper._

_"Why, you're no officer. You've been flogged," came the voice, cold and remote, and the hand no longer healed but flayed open every scar, every cut, a hundred icy knives that lanced through his body over and over again until he could hold it in no longer but cried out in his pain._

_Jack was gone. The fire was out, and he was cold, so cold. He slumped to the ground and he shivered and shook, and at some point, finally, he slept._

* * *

When he woke, he was in a soft bed, and there was a warm body curled next to his. Spears, he thought muzzily, but when with effort he turned, he could see it was the lass, her long hair spread across the pillow like a banner. 

Good Christ, he thought, horrified. Those touches, those caresses that he had imagined in what he now realized were fever dreams. Had he – no, he couldn't have – but maybe in his sleep? Oh, Christ. 

Carefully, quietly, he slid himself out from between the sheets, willing her not to waken. He was wearing his underclothes, which was a mercy, but they were damp and clammy, clinging uncomfortably to his body. But he could not take them off there, as the girl might wake at any moment, and in any case he could tell from the stiffness as he moved that he might not be able to change clothes without someone there to help. Just donning his trousers was agonizing. Every part of his body ached, from his neck to his feet, and when he took a few tentative steps away from the bed the muscles in his midsection rebelled.

A cane rested against the wall, placed there no doubt by the lass or perhaps by Father Curtis, and he took it, leaning on it as he hobbled to the chair outside the pavilion's entrance. As grateful as he was for its presence, he damned its necessity. He had a battle to fight, a fort to take, men to lead. Jack Spears, striding forward into the smoke and confusion that night, had been no less imposing for the lack of an arm. But it would look weak for Sharpe to be leaning on a cane, and he needed to project all the strength he could muster if he were to lead a successful assault on the French fort. 

The fort. Sharpe frowned, dredging through the muddled recollections that swirled through his head, insubstantial as mist. He remembered…what? They had assaulted the fort, and been repulsed. He had leaped at Leroux with his sword, he remembered that now. Slowly his head cleared and the memories returned.

He had sent Spears to Munro for cannon, and that was the last he remembered. But how long had he been lying abed, recovering from his wounds? A day, a week? When Spears returned – if he hadn't returned already – they must attack; it would be folly to give Leroux any more time to prepare than he'd already had. 

The thought of Spears brought the memory of his dream, and the blood rushed to his face as he remembered the confident, warm hand on his prick. What an odd dream; it would have seemed more likely that he would have dreamt of any one of the countless women he had been with in the past, one of the ladies or one of the whores or his own wife, whom he missed with an ache no less painful than any of his physical wounds. It was not men he thought of when he thought of these things.

But Spears had put his hand on Sharpe's arm and said that he did not think of women, hadn't he. Something like that. And now that he was remembering it, it all seemed to fit together, telling him something in the same way that tracks in the road and the dimly-heard clatter of horse's hooves in the distance told him where the enemy soldiers gathered for the ambush. Spears at the fort beside him. Spears unflinchingly rallying the men to a safe retreat. Spears in the woods, his scent lingering in the air. Spears in his dream, a smile on his face, unfastening his buttons, one by one. He felt himself growing hard beneath his clothes. 

He was no stranger to solitary pleasures, but they were more pleasurable when not solitary. Though sodomy was considered an offence, it didn't keep the men from making do with each other when willing women were scarce. It was just something that mates did, sometimes, and although he had not himself participated, he did not regard the practice with any particular disgust. But that was before he had become an officer. Officers, he had thought, didn't do that sort of thing. 

When the lass woke he was still thinking about Jack Spears. And later, much later, after she had made that daft declaration of love and he had been as gentle as he was able, his thoughts turned to Spears again. For the girl was lovely, and she was young, and she imagined herself in love with him; and Father Curtis had told him that she belonged to the Church. 

Some part of him wanted to take what she offered; he would not be a man if he didn't. That part of him wanted to stop resisting. To touch and be touched, to feel the soft curve of another's hip, to thrust into another's welcome. To lose himself in the pleasure of physical sensation. To find the release he increasingly craved.

Honour demanded he do none of this – not with her. But if Spears were truly willing…. 

He was still considering this when Harris told him that he had broken the code and identified the spy.

* * *

Sharpe left the library and limped out to the courtyard to inspect the new cannon. When he had satisfied himself, he looked in on the horses, and then he went to see the men, who saluted and straightened in their lines. If it had been up to him, he would have stayed and drilled them, over and over, making sure they were damn ready for the coming battle. But that was Harper's task, and neither he nor the men would welcome the continued presence of their major. He watched for a while, gave them as pretty a speech as he could manage, and then moved on.

There were a thousand things to do before the South Essex marched on the fort. A thousand things to occupy his attention, a thousand things to chase away the image of Jack Spears in the library. The spy who had betrayed them all. Sharpe wanted to hate him. 

What he could not do was reconcile the two images of Spears in his mind. There was the stalwart captain who led the men with valour and honour, and there was the craven spy who who gave aid and comfort to the enemy. It was as if there were two different men inhabiting the same body. He had thought he had known him, had thought they were friends. Indeed, Spears had spoken of him as a friend. "I could never betray my friend," he had said. Yet betray him he had.

There were a thousand things to do, but eventually he had to return to the Irish Mission, and to the room they shared. It still lacked an hour to sunset. An hour before battle.

Spears was in the room, his kit laid out before him, and he did not look up as Sharpe entered and crossed to his own bed. He laid the cane against the wall and picked up his sword, sliding it out of its scabbard and admiring for the hundredth time the fine steel blade. If Pat Harper had made a deal with the devil, he did not want to know it; this sword was worth a man's soul, it was, and he would be glad of it, he was certain, in the upcoming battle. 

He buckled it back into the scabbard, which he noted was nearly the same length as the hateful cane. It would serve to support him in front of the men, if he needed it. 

"There are some letters in my case," said Spears, and Sharpe looked up, but Spears had not turned around. Still facing the wall, he continued in an even voice: "For my brother, and a few others. You will see that they are delivered, won't you?"

"Of course." Sharpe found that his own voice was not so steady. He busied himself with his own equipment, and the ritual of making ready for battle soon absorbed him enough that he was startled when he heard his name again.

"Richard. A drink to our success?" Spears stood by him, holding out his flask, and if there was irony in his toast it did not show on his face. Sharpe straightened and looked at him for a long moment. Then he nodded, took the flask, and drank.

It was better stuff this time, he thought. Smooth brandy from some French cellar, and it smelled faintly of apples. Spears took the flask from him and tilted it to his lips, taking a long, deep draught that emptied the bottle to its dregs. Delicately he licked the rim of the flask's opening, clearly savouring the taste; then he carefully wiped it on his handkerchief and put the flask away.

"In the forest," said Sharpe, watching him. "What did you mean?"

"What do _you_ mean, Richard?"

"You know what I mean." He took a step closer, and he could smell Spears' scented water, overlaid with the sharp tang of the apple brandy. But he could detect no hint of the acrid and bitter odour of fear, the nervousness of a soldier as he prepared for battle. 

There was only calm in Spears' eyes as he shook his head. "Whatever I might have said in the forest, it doesn't matter now."

"Maybe it does."

"So what are you going to do?" That mocking smile was back on his lips. "As you're not an officer and a gentleman." 

"Now, that's not –" he began, a tide of anger rising within him at hearing his earlier words thrown back at him, but Spears held up his hand. 

"A gentleman would pretend he hadn't heard. Or if he'd heard, that he hadn't understood. And an officer would have me court-martialled on suspicion of sodomy." He touched Sharpe's arm, just for a moment, a whisper of a touch that nonetheless seemed to burn through Sharpe's uniform jacket straight through to his skin. "What will _you_ do, Richard?"

Sharpe looked at him for a long moment. He stood there so calmly, so self-assuredly, and yet in one hour…one hour….

"Damn you," he growled, reaching for Spears, his hands tightening around the man's shoulders. "Damn you."

Spears' lips tasted of brandy, and the buttons on his trousers came undone easily. There was a deft hand at his own trousers, and then flesh against warm flesh. He tumbled back onto his bed, pulling Spears along with him, down onto his bruised and aching body.

"I did not think you were interested," said Spears, and he sounded not the least bit breathless or surprised. 

"Shut up." He rolled over so he was on top, crushing Spears into the thin mattress. His prick thrust into the gap in Spears' trousers, against his skin, and it felt rough and not altogether pleasant, but it would be enough.

"No, Richard," whispered Spears, putting his hand against Sharpe's chest and urging him to his side, and for a moment Sharpe froze. And then gently Spears slid down his body and took him in his mouth.

Christ. It was something only whores did, and that only if you paid them well. The sight of Spears' dark head at his groin, of those chiselled lips engulfing him wrenched a soft moan from him. Spears released him for a moment, shook his head and made a quiet shushing noise, then returned to his task.

Right, he had to be quiet. The door had no lock, and there might be soldiers or priests in the corridor. But it took all his self-control to stifle the desperate groans that wanted to escape his throat, as much self-control as it took not to thread his fingers into Spears' hair and thrust as hard as he could, again and again. Instead he balled up his fist and shoved it into his own mouth, biting down on his knuckles as Spears licked and sucked him into shuddering release.

He lay there for a moment, his eyes closed, breathing hard. He felt Spears wiping him off, fastening his trousers again, but he could not bring himself to look at the man. Not quite yet. Certainly he could think of nothing to say. 

Spears slid back up the bed and Sharpe felt the pallet shift as he settled his body alongside Sharpe's, his back against Sharpe's chest. Spears reached for his hand and grasped it firmly, and Sharpe let him place it where he would; then he curved his fingers around Spears' hard prick and Spears cupped the back of his hand with his own, wordlessly urging him into a fast and ungentle rhythm. 

He buried his face in Spears' scented neck. His hand seemed to move of its own accord, as though it were not part of his body but some other instrument. Spears gasped quietly, nearly inaudible noises that Sharpe sensed rather than heard, the vibrations against his cheek growing ever more desperate until finally Spears threw his head back and spilled into his hand.

In the silence he could hear only Spears' breathing, and the steady hammer of his own heart. Then Spears shifted next to him, sitting up on the edge of the bed, and he pulled his hand away and self-consciously wiped it on the bedclothes. He wondered what time it was.

Spears rose to his feet and walked across the room, then busied himself again with his preparations for the battle. After a moment, Sharpe stood as well, but his kit was as ready as it ever would be. At any rate, it was near time to assemble the men. 

His hand was on the door when Spears turned, a brown leather case in his hand. He held it up so Sharpe could see. "My letters are here," he said, then carefully placed the case at the foot of his bed. 

Sharpe nodded. "I'll take care of them." 

"Thank you, Richard," said Spears, and their eyes met for a long moment; and then Sharpe pushed open the door and left the room.

* * *

The men of the South Essex were nervous, but they were ready, forming into their lines straight and proud, rifles glinting in the last of the late-day sun. Sharpe leaned on his scabbard and surveyed them. There was a French fort to take, but they had artillery to back them up, and they had Captain the Lord Spears to carry the flag ahead of them and inspire them to charge. Aye, they were ready.

He had wondered briefly whether Spears would be there, but of course he was, sitting his horse as elegantly as though he were out for a Sunday ride. Sharpe looked up at him and met his eye, held it for a long moment. In Spears' gaze he saw just a hint of the fear that his body did not admit to, mingled with regret, and with fortitude, and with honour. Yes, he thought, there was honour in the man still; honour, and – despite his words in the library – yet enough of the coin of courage for this final task. 

Sharpe slapped the horse on the rump and it charged toward the French lines, Spears holding their flag high. _Go on,_ _Jack_ , thought Sharpe. Then he turned to the men, and called out, "By God, lads, aren't you going to give him a cheer?"

And they shouted for Spears, shouted until they were hoarse, and Sharpe shouted with them.


End file.
